


your kind of starshine

by chymyg (greetingsfrommaars)



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Criminals, Alternate Universe - Space, Established Relationship, M/M, Questionable flirting, married antics, mentions of jaehyun specifically to slander him, mentions of other members - Freeform, space outlaw husbands!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:48:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26572471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greetingsfrommaars/pseuds/chymyg
Summary: To spice up their married life, Johnny and Yuta go on a nice date with only alittletheft on the side.Just kidding.
Relationships: Nakamoto Yuta/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 12
Kudos: 44





	your kind of starshine

“Babe, if you put that on our wall, I’m taking taking the kids and leaving you for Jaehyun.”

Johnny doesn’t look up. “You would never. Jaehyun can’t drive for shit. You’d be planet-locked for the rest of your life.”

A scoff. “No one dates Jaehyun for his driving skills. And I can drive myself just fine!”

“I think the dents – the _craters_ on our starboard compartments would beg to differ.” Johnny juts his chin at another wall hanging. “Okay, what about that one?”

Yuta glowers at him, but gives it a glance. “Really, Johnny?” He scowls at Johnny’s laugh. “Are you fucking with me right now?

Johnny’s laughing so hard he’s practically flopping over. “Hey, it’s a perfect likeness!”

“We do not need a disturbingly realistic portrait of the twenty-fifth Vogon overlord vaporizing his enemies in our cabin,” Yuta says firmly. He gives it a queasy look and shudders.

“But it’ll go great with the posters we’ve already got! It can be like an artistic contrast, so they look prettier.” Johnny gives a winning smile. “Y’know, I think I’ve really got an eye for this. Maybe I should retire and become an interior designer.”

“Babe.” Yuta closes his grip on Johnny’s arm. “You can’t just slap five of our wanted posters on the wall and call it home decor.”

Johnny just laughs again, but honestly, neither of them has any kind of instinct for interior design. They’re more of the type to pick all their furniture secondhand from backwater planet markets. Harder to get recognized by the authorities that way – and easier to stage a disruption if they do. Stars, does Johnny love a good marketplace brawl in the morning. Really gets the blood pumping.

They’re doing just fine in their mess of a starship, really. Even if all their friends mock them for it, and Donghyuck despairs over them every time he deigns to stop by and oil up their rusty old parts. But Johnny knows Donghyuck owns at least ten posters of himself, so who’s the real narcissist here? Johnny at least has the excuse of admiring his husband’s rakishly good looks alongside his own. The poster even lists off some of Yuta’s best traits: his fearsome scowl, his silver tongue, his near-perfect aim with any firearm… Johnny practically swoons at the thought.

Ah, maybe Johnny should go easy on him.

Before Johnny can turn, Yuta stalks up behind him and launches himself at Johnny’s back. Johnny almost goes down like a meteorite – pretty, sparkly, destructive – but manages to catch himself. He still teeters forward as if he’ll fall, just to feel Yuta tighten his arms around his neck and cackle in his ear. Then he rights himself with Yuta draped over his shoulders like a heavy blanket.

“Hey there,” Johnny greets him.

Yuta kicks his legs up to cling to Johnny’s waist like a monkey. Johnny glances down at the thighs sliding past his hips and swallows. “Just keep your mouth shut and carry me like a good husband, babe.”

“As you wish, dearest.” Johnny takes a few steps, tottering and swaying from side to side as if to dislodge his passenger.

Yuta screeches when his legs slip, leaving him half hanging off. He slaps at Johnny’s back. “Okay, that’s it. Say goodbye to my perfect ass, jackass.”

“But baby… how will I get through the long nights without it?” Johnny dials his pout up to eleven. “How could you leave _my_ perfect ass lonely like that?”

All his pout gets is another irritated eye-roll. “I should’ve known you’d turn out to be such a sleaze,” Yuta complains. “Got hitched to you in my impulsive youth, and now I’m saddled with you for life? Where’s my refund?” He wiggles his fingers at Johnny, who just pouts harder. “Stars, I should’ve known. You were such a bastard when we first met.” His grin sharpens. “Should’ve shot you when I had the chance.”

Almost involuntarily, Johnny is seized with the memory of Yuta in his well-fitted uniform: the complete lack of hesitation in his stance, the glint of the gun barrel as he raises it to Johnny’s head…

Johnny clears his throat. Tugs on his collar. Avoids looking at Yuta’s shit-eating grin.

There’s a muffled groan of disgust behind them.

Yuta whirls around in a heartbeat, blasters at the ready.

The shopkeeper glares back from the far wall, where she’s trussed up and locked down like a convict bound for a stint in maximum security.

“Dear,” Johnny says lightly, “why don’t we save this for when we don’t have company?”

There is a robbery underway, after all.

Yuta cocks one blaster at the shopkeeper in warning. Then he stands down.

But stars, there’s nothing quite like the sight of Yuta, guns drawn, eyes blazing defiantly, holding up an outer-galaxy pawn shop. His hair glitters with glass dust from smashing through the window. It makes him look like a dream. Johnny will have to brush it out carefully later, and he doesn’t even mind.

Sometimes Johnny just looks at Yuta dozing off in the copilot seat with textbook posture, or blasting through a locked door (too impatient to let Johnny pick the lock), and he can’t believe what kind of luck he’s had. This man is his. The greatest heist he’s ever pulled off.

“Babe, how do I look?”

Johnny turns, a compliment already on his tongue, to see Yuta with an awful jewel-encrusted gorgon mask over his face. When did he get that out of its display case? The speed at which Yuta improves at thievery would be terrifying if it weren’t so hot.

“You’re wiping the biometrics from that by yourself,” Johnny scolds him, but he’s laughing. Looks like Yuta’s got these display cases handled. “I’m going to pay that vault a visit in the back; you can go on out here. And make sure our lovely guest stays comfortable, won’t you, dear?” He winks at the scowling shopkeeper.

“You got it, babe!”  
  
  
  
When Johnny walks back out front, it’s with his dimensional boxes packed to the brim and his heavy-duty laser still warm in his hand. He’s a man for breaking things, not fixing them, but he can already tell the shopkeeper will have a hell of a time paying for the repairs on this place.

Now, Johnny will admit that he regrets some of the property damage they’ve left behind. He’s a thief, not a barbarian. But not this time. After what he’s heard about going on behind closed doors here, Johnny has no problem taking them for all they’re worth.

“Dearest! Look at all these jewels I found in the vault!”

Yuta humors him and ooh’s and ah’s appropriately.

“I figure we can carry them out with some of that metalwork and use them to get you a nice new blaster,” Johnny continues.

“Oh, _baby._ Yes, talk to me like that.”

The shopkeeper pretends to vomit. Johnny’s grin widens.

All in all, she’s been a surprisingly quiet “guest”, considering her nefarious dealings. The height of her defiance had been declaring she would send the intergalactic authorities after them (right before Yuta smashed her comms systems) – they’d responded with “you can try!” and “our married life needed a little spicing up anyway,” respectively. After that, she’d seemed to subside into giving them the silent treatment like a petulant teenager.

More likely she’s keeping her mouth shut so she can keep her eyes and ears open. She does seem the type to scheme quietly behind a sulky façade. Maybe plotting a way out of the digital handcuffs?

Johnny meets Yuta’s eyes and nods. Time to roll out.

The shopkeeper may think she’s out of the woods now, that she can finally focus on hacking the cuffs, but she’ll find it quite a challenge. Johnny disabled the password altogether. From the look of her, she won’t even think to smash them into deactivating.

Yuta bumps shoulders with Johnny as they head out. “My turn to drive, babe? I need to prove myself and make you regret ever slandering me.”

“I’m not letting you anywhere near the controls until we’re at least an hour out from the nearest system,” Johnny objects. “Especially with our new shipments on board.”

Yuta rolls his eyes. “C’mon, babe. You know I would never endanger the _children._ ” He flaps a hand at the boxes of loot. “I need those babies for that new blaster you just promised me.”

“What, just the children? What about my safety?” Johnny is not above whining like a child.

“After that shit you pulled? You’re on your own, buster.” But Yuta pecks his cheek as he wanders onto the ship, so it’s not all bad.

When Johnny looks at him now, holding up an outpost with a blaster in each hand, he can barely see the remnants of the space academy cadet he’d met one fateful night in an alleyway on the fifth moon of Axelor. Yuta had been young and self-righteous then, before they went on the run from a mob boss together, before he fell for Johnny’s charms and got irreparably corrupted. It’s one of Johnny’s proudest achievements. One of the academy’s best shooters, falling in with an unscrupulous career criminal. It’s a love story for the ages.

First Admiral Kim of the intergalactic authority may beg to differ, but they showed him just what they thought of his opinion the last time they led him on a merry chase across a restricted exoplanet.

“Oh, one more thing,” Yuta says, planting his feet directly in Johnny’s way. He leans into Johnny’s space, smirking up at him. Johnny refuses to budge.

Yuta steals a kiss and Johnny’s breath all at once. He stole Johnny’s heart long ago.  
  
  
  
“Johnny, someday we’re gonna crash-land –”

The right thruster makes a sound like a cannon going off and fizzles out. Johnny swears.

“Someday we’re gonna crash-land on a second-rate moon with no atmosphere –”

Johnny thumps his fist on the main console, as if he’ll turn the ship back on through sheer force of rage alone. “Ow!” He shakes out his fist.

Yuta seizes that hand and squeezes. “Someday we’re gonna crash-land and end up marooned in the middle of nowhere, and we’ll have to look Kim in his smug face when he shows up to arrest us, and I’ll have nothing to say but I told you so!”

Johnny groans into the controls, where his face has dropped dangerously close to the button panel. It’s anyone’s guess which button he’ll set off with his forehead. Maybe he’ll turn on the rear lights; maybe he’ll eject them out of their seats into the dusty atmosphere. Yuta’s got his money on the ejection.

Johnny groans again, but turns his hand over to squeeze back. “I’m a little busy right now, Yuta.”

Yuta rolls his eyes. “Aw, is the giant baby sad now that his husband turned out to be right, like always?”

Johnny makes a muffled sound of protest.

“I’m sorry, what was that? You accept your husband as the genius – as the all-knowing being he is, and you’ll never doubt him again?”

Honestly, Yuta hadn’t even planned on heckling Johnny for this long. There are dimensional boxes stacked high with nice things calling his name – he puts his academy-grade math to good use cataloguing stolen goods and summing up their going prices on the black market. Usually he wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to get all close and personal with their loot. What can he say? He appreciates the finer things in life: glittering jewels, well-maintained blasters, men who know how to handle a certified supernova of a husband when they meet one.

But the sooner Johnny gets them off the ground, the sooner Yuta can appreciate one of the finest things of all: the sight of Johnny maneuvering around in an old junker as if she’s a sleek racer fresh off the factory line.

So it’s not such a sacrifice, in the grand scheme of things, when Yuta spends the next five minutes petting his husband’s hair and hiding his snickers at Johnny’s theatrics. (If Johnny realizes his humor is working, it’ll go straight to his ego. Yuta can’t give him the satisfaction until they’re actually in space.)

Finally, Johnny has had his filling of groaning. He straightens, rolls up his sleeves, and lays expert hands on the controls. Yuta’s content to sit back and watch what his husband can do with his hands and his sexy brain.

There’s a horrid sound of metal scraping on metal. Then they’re off.

Yuta leans back and lets the swooping sensation carry him off. He turns and watches the flex of Johnny’s arms pulling the controls to regular travel speed, bound for the nearest outpost.

“So when are you going to replace this old clunker, huh?”

Johnny gasps, scandalized. “Shh! She can hear you!” He pets the nearest panel as if it’ll purr under his hand. “Forgive Yuta, darling. He didn’t mean it.”

Yuta snorts. When they first got together, he used to play games with Johnny, asking him to choose: the ship or me? In a sarcastic mood, Johnny would point out that without the ship, they’d both be dead. In a maudlin mood, Johnny would admit that he can always build a new ship, but he might never meet another Yuta.

Yuta likes being alive, and he likes feeling special, so. He stays.  
  
  
  
Once they’re out of range of any pursuers the shopkeeper might have called on them, Johnny hands control over to autopilot. They’re in no danger here. Their favorite chaser is busy for once – on a complicated mission in another quadrant, according to the police scanner they hacked into. They’ll accept the clean getaway for the moment of peace that it is, though Yuta is starting to miss Doyoung’s frustrated face. He’s just so cute when he fumes.

Johnny stretches, then turns to fix Yuta with a look. “Alright, what did you get?”

Yuta shrugs one shoulder. “What do you mean?”

A hand lands on his thigh. Yuta tenses. “What did you pocket while I wasn’t looking, _dearest_?”

Yuta gives his best winning smile. “Sorry babe, I’m not following.” Something in him curls in satisfaction at Johnny’s answering smirk. When Johnny leans further into his space and holds out a hand, Yuta places his hand in Johnny’s. He pauses to let Johnny feel the weight clasped in his palm. Then, he unfolds his fingers.

Johnny tilts their hands to let it catch the light. It’s a metallic tetrahedron, its base about the size of Yuta’s palm, covered in esoteric etchings.

“Nabbed it while you were packing up,” Yuta says. Johnny looks unsurprised. “Figured I’d sneak one in while the lady was watching you.”

He’d found it towards the back of a display case, hidden by the shinier pieces in front of it. Yuta doesn’t have much of an eye for circuitry, but he’s spent enough time watching Johnny play with his toys to recognize a fancy piece of tech when he sees one. It may look like an overly ornate paperweight, but it’s probably worth a an untold amount to the right people. These scientist types tend to build systems fine-tuned to their specific needs. Anyone who made something this fancy-looking probably put hours into the specialized tech too.

Yuta figures it’ll make a nice toy for his husband.

You wouldn’t know it by the look of him, running around robbing people, but Johnny is something of a tinkerer. So much so, in fact, that his “workbench” spans most of the available space in their cabin, leaving Yuta with nowhere to clean his guns.

“I figure you could take a crack at it, try to reverse-engineer it or something.” Johnny’s eyes light up. Predictable. “Or if that doesn’t work, maybe you can break it down for parts if that’ll sell better –”

Yuta almost drops it when a ray of light bursts from the very tip. Before he can shout, the light broadens, as the sides of the pyramid fold out like a geometric flower. He can’t take his eyes off the light pouring from his palm, but he feels Johnny’s hand come to grip his arm like a vise.

“STOP! STOP – in, uh, the name of the law!”

A young face appears in the plane of light. Did Yuta activate a holo-call somehow?

“I’m an agent of the law, and I demand – I _order_ you to stop it!” They gawk at him in silence. “Right now!’

“You’re not old enough to be an agent of the law,” Yuta points out. He’d know. He barely avoided becoming one himself.

“Not human enough, either,” Johnny says. The holo-kid freezes. “Look at the way his mouth moves when he talks,” he whispers in Yuta’s ear. “He’s an AI.”

The kid’s face flickers for a second, as if in doubt. Now that Yuta’s looking, he can recognize the tiny glitches of a simulated face. He’s only ever met one other AI with an actual face before – Jaehyun’s digital boyfriend, Ten – but he kinda hopes this one isn’t as mouthy. One sassy disembodied brain is enough for him, thank you very much.

“I’ll call the cops on you!” the kid yells, abandoning subtlety. “I’m linked up to the Ultranet, don’t think I won’t!”

“Whoa, whoa, calm down!” A run-in with law enforcement definitely wasn’t in Yuta’s plans for the evening. He hadn’t even realized they could get Ultranet all the way out here. And now he’s finding out from some shouty brain in a box? This is embarrassing. “Let’s settle down for a sec and talk about this like adults.”

Johnny raises an eyebrow at him.

“Okay, like two adults and some AI kid,” Yuta amends. “I’m sure we can work this out if we knock our heads together and think real hard.”

The kid snaps his mouth shut with a look of suspicion and no little confusion. “Work this out?”

“Absolutely,” Yuta says. He’s never had to negotiate with an AI before, but there’s a first time for everything. “I’m sure a dashing pair of professionals like my husband and me can come up with something useful to a, uh, plucky young AI like yourself.”

The kid just stares at him, eyes even wider.

Damn, this kid’s a hard sell. Yuta looks to Johnny for a hand, only to find him smirking, arms crossed. His husband waves a hand at him – the _go on, it’s your show_ is implied. What a great big lump of help you are, Johnny Suh.

The major problem here is that Yuta has no idea what to offer a person with no body and way more brains than him. Being around Ten always feels like he’s imposing on the time of someone way out of his league, socially and intellectually. Yuta can’t imagine ever offering Ten something he actually wants – something he can’t get just as easily from Jaehyun, a man who would probably conquer entire planets if Ten asked. Jaehyun would steal any treasure, token, or tool at a single word from Ten.

Yuta might even let him have it, instead of stealing it first, if Jaehyun could help him wrangle his way out of this one.

But Ten isn’t here to make them all feel like plebeians, and Jaehyun isn’t here to make their skin crawl with his affection, so Yuta will just have to manage on his own.

“How about this: want a nice, summery getaway? We could whisk you away to a great vacation planet! Give your, uh, electrons a rest. Maybe Prospit, I’ve heard the five suns are amazing.”

“Maybe he doesn’t do well with heat,” Johnny points out with some amusement. Oh right, a high-density piece of tech – probably overheats easily.

“Okay, then we’ll bring you to a nice frigid planet!” Yuta revises in a hurry. “Maybe one with other AI around – hey, we can find you a nice robot boyfriend! Or girlfriend, or partner, or platonic partner – totally get if you’re not into the whole romance thing, I mean, look at what I have to deal with here.” Yuta gestures at Johnny’s everything.

The kid glances at Johnny and clams up even more. Maybe Yuta shouldn’t have drawn attention to him. Some people are actually intimidated by Johnny, even though he’s a giant goober.

But now that Yuta’s laid out some starter ideas, it’ll be safer to ask the kid for his terms. He might still ask for something outrageous, but Yuta can threaten to shoot him faster than the authorities can get there if it really comes to it.

The kid’s mouth opens and closes with no sound coming out. Is it possible for an AI to mute themself or something?

“How about a tour around the galaxy, and maybe an upgrade or two if you trust me to put my hands near your wiring?” Johnny finally suggests.

The kid falls silent for long enough that Yuta can practically see the numbers crunching behind his glowy forehead. Then he looks up, gaze flipping between them. “But what do you want in return?”

Yuta snorts. “Well, it’d be nice if you didn’t snitch –”

“Run calculations and navigation routes for us,” Johnny cuts in. “Might as well put that big brain to use.”

“Johnny!” Yuta panics. “You can’t just – babe, tone it down –”

“Deal,” the kid says immediately. Then he balks. “I, uh, have no hand to shake on it with you, but you’ve got a deal.”

Whoa, whoa, wait, what?

“Great choice,” Johnny answers, as if that was the natural conclusion. Yuta doesn’t get it. Maybe Johnny became an AI whisperer while Yuta wasn’t looking. “Looking forward to working with you.”

“Uh, yeah. Likewise,” the kid says. There’s a pause where they both stare at Yuta.

Ah, what the hell. This is all moving a bit fast for him, but at least the kid is cute. “Welcome about, kiddo.”

He gets an awkward smile in response. “Thanks, um… captain.”

Johnny finally sidles up to loop an arm around Yuta’s shoulders and reel him in. “So, does our new crew member have a name?”

The kid suddenly stiffens to face them straight on, like the avatar version of standing at attention. “Model 1270409, alias MARK, at your service.”

“Welcome to the ship, Mark. I’m Johnny, and my lovely husband –” he squeezes Yuta’s waist – “is Yuta.”

Mark nods quickly like a bobblehead. Cute.

With introductions over with, Johnny takes Mark from Yuta and gets right to figuring out a place on the control panel to plug Mark in. Yuta can’t offer much help on that end. He’s just about to head back to start tallying their spoils, when a thought occurs to him.

He strides back up to the prow to lean on a panel and draw Johnny’s eyes to the glint of his smile. “So what’s this I hear about the Ultranet reaching all the way out here? I thought you said the signal couldn’t reach this far past the Belt, Johnny. Have you been holding out on me?”

He doesn’t really mind. More than anything it’s an opportunity to tease his husband about the possibility of being wrong.

Mark pipes up instead. “Oh, uh… honestly, that was a bluff.” His cheeks color under Yuta’s sudden stare. “I actually couldn’t call the cops even if I wanted to.”

No connectivity? But that means –

“Even if there were signal out here, Markie here would need a physical dial-in to hook up to it,” Johnny explains like he’s teaching a four-year-old, the bastard. “His visualization and comms systems are on the older side.”

“Yeah, really, the scientist who put me together was using old stuff he didn’t need for his job anymore.”

Yuta sags back on the panel, mind reeling. He feels a flush high on his cheeks. All this means –

“You knew the whole time and you didn’t even say anything? You just let me grovel for some AI kid with no connection and no _leverage_ – no offense, Mark – like some kind of idiot?”

“Well, if you believe I have leverage, then I do,” Mark reasons. This kid is more dangerous than Yuta gave him credit for.

“You seemed to be having fun with your dramatics,” Johnny says mildly. “How could I take that from you?”

Yuta punches him in the shoulder. Johnny doesn’t even give him the courtesy of faking a wince.

You know what? Who would put up with this kind of treatment? Who needs a capable husband who drives you everywhere and indulges your sticky-fingered habits? Yuta’s had enough of this.

He takes Mark and flounces off into the cabin, leaving Johnny pouting at the controls.  
  
  
  
Mark clearly has no idea how to react to the decor in their sleeping cabin. His eyes swing from an older poster of Johnny, back when he still had an undercut and no husband, to one of the latest, with Yuta’s pretty face on full display.

“That one’s my favorite,” Yuta tells him. “They really got my nose right on that one.” That, and it’s one that depicts both of them together, to emphasize their combined threat or something.

“Uh, yeah, totally.” Mark glances at him, but his look seems weightier than simply assessing the accuracy of Yuta’s nose. Then he clears his nonexistent throat. “Hey, this is kinda late, but I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you back there or anything. Honestly, I didn’t think the bluff would actually work.”

Yuta blinks. Mark’s face is disarmingly open the whole time he speaks. Something in his wide-eyed expression kills any resentment before it could grow in Yuta’s petty little heart. “Nah, it’s okay. It’s my fault for being dumb enough to fall for it.”

Mark accepts that with a little curl of his mouth. Yuta will let that hint of mockery slide, for now.

They fall silent, admiring the caricatures of the legendary outlaw couple on the wall together. Totally worth the admiration, of course. Citizens applaud them, corrupt shopkeepers fear them, grumpy law enforcement agents pretend to hate them…

Mark speaks up, softer than before.

“Actually, I’m – I’m kinda glad it was you guys. Who got me.” He hesitates, and reads Yuta’s surprise in his face. “And I’m grateful Johnny decided to let me join the ship.”

At this, they both look at the oldest poster of Johnny again. But now when Yuta looks, his mind fills in the scruffy aviator’s outfit, the flash of his eyes settling on Yuta’s figure, the dangling pendant in one ear that Yuta stared at for most of their conversation, oddly self-conscious in the face of Johnny’s relentless stare.

“He’s kinder than I thought he’d be,” Mark says.

“Yeah,” Yuta says, a remembered shiver passing through his limbs. “Me too.”

Years ago, a space academy cadet ran into an outlaw in a back alleyway and panicked, raising his gun with fake bravado. He’d never faced down a criminal one-on-one before. No one had taught him the protocol for striking out on his own, and certainly no one had told him the criminal might flirt even harder in the face of an open weapon instead of running away. He’d had things to do. Missions to run. Even this criminal to apprehend, one would think, and yet all he could think of was the heat rising in his face, the blank ringing in his mind. That dangling earring, twisting in the light.

Then a building exploded, and gunfire burst from the alley mouth, and men came shouting. And other such insignificant details.

What really matters here is this: when the time came to run, the outlaw held out a hand. The cadet took it.

The series of wanted posters over the years can tell you what happened next.

A love story for the ages, Johnny would say, because he’s a sap. He calls Yuta his dearest treasure.

There isn’t a day Yuta isn’t blessed to call Johnny his.

**Author's Note:**

> it brings me great joy to imagine doyoung angry-hornily chasing johnyu across planets and solar systems while his fellow officers question why he’s so invested in this one thief couple. please enjoy this mental image with me


End file.
